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St John,
Oxborough

This church gets a lot of visitors for
several reasons, one of which is what happened here one
autumn afternoon in 1948. While the children were out
playing in the school yard across the street, the great
tower and spire of St John tottered, crumbled, and came
crashing down into the church below. It must have been
absolutely spectacular. Just imagine being six years old
and watching that happen! I would have wet myself with
fright. Still, it would have made a good story to bore
any future grandchildren with. I wonder how many times I
would end up telling it?

By the time the dust had settled, it was obvious that the
damage was considerable, although by some miracle the
early 16th century Bedingfield Chapel to the south of the
chancel had survived. The former tower and nave area have
been grassed over now, the north arcade and aisle wall
retained as the kind of collonade you might expect to
find in an Italian hill town, the chancel given a new
west wall and the Bedingfield chapel given its own
entrance. The overall effect is rather lovely, a cluster
of ecclesiastical buildings in a garden. From the road it
almost has a post-modern feel to it, the sort of thing
that Daniel Libeskind might have produced for Salford
Quays. There's still something voyeuristic about coming
to see it though, a bit like slowing down to gawp at a
road accident.

Another reason for so many visitors is that the church
sits immediately to the north of the National Trust's
Oxburgh Hall, one of the most spectacular Houses in
Norfolk. For historical reasons the Hall has its own chapel, but the life of
the Hall has touched the history of this church in a
major way, as we will see.

I said before that it was fortunate the Bedingfield
chapel survived, because it contains a pair of what
Mortlock thought were the best terracotta tombs in
England. To stand in the chapel is to be surrounded by
the full glory of the English Catholic Church on the eve
of the Reformation. The earlier of the two for Margaret
Bedingfield forms a triumphant entrance screen to the
west of the chapel, and through the other you can see
into the chancel. They are massive, canopied and
elaborately decorated in the international renaissance
style, and lead you to wonder what would have happened to
design in England if we had not opted out of the European
Church.

The Bedingfields lived at the Hall - in
fact, they still do, though not the ones buried here,
obviously. They were a major recusant family, but a
certain amount of pragmatism ensured their survival
despite their retention of the Old Faith. For example,
they chose to be buried here in the parish church even
after the Anglicans took it over, and the memorial to the
two Henry Bedingfields had to wait half a century to
proclaim their Stuart sympathies. The chapel is a curious
place, quite unlike a church. It is rather like being in
a state room in a fabulous palace.

To enter the church itself you will need to
go back outside, and in through the west door. The church
is lovely inside, with a Festival of Britain crispness to
the way it was restored. The memorials they rescued from
the rubble are now on the south wall, and there is also a
mighty fine piscina and sedilia. There is some good
surviving medieval glass depicting Old Testament prophets
and a king, but the medieval roodscreen is now at East
Dereham. They get so many visitors here that you'd think
the parish would be tempted to install a tat shop, but it
is all very restrained. You can buy a pen or a bookmark,
but more space has been given to the second hand
bookstall at the back, which is encouraging.

I said earlier that the Bedingfields were
famously recusant. Do wander in the graveyard to the
north of the church before leaving. There are several
fairly modern headstones that have Catholic inscriptions,
a reminder of how Catholicism survived in many rural
communities where the Big House was Catholic. Resistance
through ritual, pragmatism, call it what you will.